Earlier this morning Kindbody, a fertility-focused startup providing both virtual and in-person care, announced that it has raised $15 million in Series A funding. RRE Ventures and Perceptive Advisors led the round with participation from Green D Ventures, Trail Mix Ventures and Winklevoss Capital. 

WHAT THEY DO

Kindbody offers women fertility testing, egg freezing, IVF and wellness care. In addition to the brick-and-mortar location in New York, where women can come for fertility treatments, patients can also access virtual care. 

The platform offers virtual therapy sessions for patients to deal with stress, while it does indicate that the sessions could be used to deal with fertility stress, the platform said users can talk about anything from marriage to careers. Additionally, the platform has a virtual wellness coach, which can help work with users on their lifestyle and diet choices. 

WHAT IT’S FOR 

The company plans to expand into mental health, nutrition and gynecological services in the future. It is also opening a new, larger brick-and-mortar location in New York. 

THE TREND

Fertility startups have become a hot trend in digital health. From Mira’s home fertility testing to Natural Cycles contraceptive app, more and more Femtech companies have come up with technologies to address this area. 

For example, in December, London-based Concepta Diagnostics, an app and monitoring system that tests women’s LH hormone levels to detect ovulation and pregnancy, launched.

But some have called into question Femtech’s focus on fertility. 

“About 60 percent of femtech startups are focused on fertility, nursing and pregnancy. Collectively these startups have raised over a billion dollars on investments,” Vanessa Mason, director of the Institute for the Future, said at Mad*Pow's HXD 2019 conference in Boston in March.

She added: “What does designing for wellbeing and health look like for women, all women; specifically what does that wellbeing look like when it doesn’t include pregnancy?”

ON THE RECORD

"We were excited about Kindbody from the moment we met the team," Alice Lloyd George, a partner at RRE, said in a statement. "We believe in their vertically-integrated and patient-centric approach. Demand is growing rapidly and there's a huge gap in this market — the timing couldn't be better to build a trusted, national brand that speaks to millennials and is fundamentally democratizing access to care."